“Charles loved her voice. It was so soft and blurred, like pastels. It made his neck tingle just to listen to her. It gave him the same delicious feeling he had as he hovered on the brink of sleep and this feeling - until now - had been the single most pleasant feeling in his life. It was the voice that coloured everything he now thought about her. It was shy and tentative and musical. Sometimes he did not manage to hear the words she said, but he did not let on about his deafness.”
― Peter Carey, quote from Illywhacker
“My name is Herbert Badgery. I am a hundred and thirty-nine years old and something of a celebrity. They come and look at me and wonder how I do it. There are weeks when I wonder the same, whole stretches of terrible time. It is hard to believe you can feel so bad and still not die.”
― Peter Carey, quote from Illywhacker
“She did not begin to tell real lies until Rosa was in hospital suffering that filthy rot that left her all eaten out inside, as light and fragile as a pine log infested with white ant”
― Peter Carey, quote from Illywhacker
“She felt his personality to be round and smooth and free from nasty spikes.”
― Peter Carey, quote from Illywhacker
“His great carved wooden head was marked with a black eye that was more yellow than black and from this spectacular bed of bruised flesh the eye itself, sand irritated, bloodshot, as wild as a currawong's, stared out at a landscape in which the tops of fences protruded from windswept sand.”
― Peter Carey, quote from Illywhacker
“The cicadas, as if they were wired on the same circuit, suddenly filled the garden with a loud burst of celebration.”
― Peter Carey, quote from Illywhacker
“It made me comfortable. It was a house where you could put your feet up and drink French champagne or Ballarat Bitter according to your mood.”
― Peter Carey, quote from Illywhacker
“Years later when she was being eccentric, had shed her corset and let her arse spread unhindered by anything but her perpetual dressing gown.”
― Peter Carey, quote from Illywhacker
“The most puzzling thing in the entire encounter occurred at a certain stage very late in the conversation, when she discovered she had been talking to a man. She had the feeling of a dream where things and people transmogrify, characters dissolve from one to the other like tricks in a film, monsters in a bottle. She had the sense, the very distinct sense, of her companion's female gender; she had been pleased to find it, had relaxed into it, had been even more delighted to find it coupled with an elegant wit and a sense of both joy and irony. The forces of life, she thought to herself, are flying high tonight.”
― Peter Carey, quote from Illywhacker
“There are problems with the wombat," Nathan Schick said. "I was interested in wombats in '29. I went up to your zoo in Sydney and looked at the wombat. The fellow said you could train them but God, Herbie, no offence... Lee-Anne... but the wombat is not star quality.”
― Peter Carey, quote from Illywhacker
Peter Carey
Born place: in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria, Australia
Born date May 7, 1943
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“If guilt was an animal then it would be an octopus. All slimy and wriggly with hundreds of arms that wrap around your insides and squeeze them tight.”
― Annabel Pitcher, quote from Rollercoasters: My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece Reader
“Calming allows us to rest, and resting is a precondition for healing.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, quote from Trái tim của Bụt
“Cody said. “And David…” “Yeah?” “Y’all ever stick your tongue in my ear, and I’ll shoot ya in yer bagpipes.”
― Brandon Sanderson, quote from Calamity
“Pan," Hook said. "You saved my life."
Peter didn't know what to say. He had gone back to rescue Hook so unthinkingly, so instinctually, that he was only now beginning to realize he had done it. He hadn't worried about a single thing besides protecting Hook.
He cast around for a reason—an excuse, not the real reason, which he already knew.
"I had to," he said finally. "If you'd died there, I wouldn't have been the one to defeat you."
Hook gave a low chuckle. "Your obsession is flattering, Pan. And I share it."
"Obsession?"
"Is that not what they call it," Hook said, "when two men can think of nothing but each other?"
Peter went still, feeling his ears go hot at the implication. Hook knew, he thought. Hook knew exactly what Peter had felt before, when Hook had pinned him down.
He sat there tongue-tied. The two of them didn't speak for some time, until the kraken's last cringing wails had receded and there was no sound but the shiver of the leaves.
"Thank you," Hook said eventually. "I suppose I should have led with that.”
― Austin Chant, quote from Peter Darling
“My mother taught me how to find grace in wreckage. She taught me not how to reassemble, but how to rearrange. The stained-glass pictures she made were certain evidence that things can be broken and put back together, and that the mended thing will be more beautiful than the original.”
― T. Greenwood, quote from Undressing the Moon
The God-Stone War
A Moment
Seducing Destiny
The House of God
If I Have a Wicked S...
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